In this groundbreaking interdisciplinary work, Frederick Turner
presents a new theory of aesthetics based on the argument that
beauty is an objective reality in the universe. He identifies the
experience of beauty as a pancultural, neurobiological phenomenon.
Drawing on recent work in a wide range of fields--ritual and
dramatic performance, the oral tradition, paleoanthropology and
human evolution, neurobiology, cosmology and theoretic physics,
chaos theory and fractal mathematics--the book describes evolution
as a self-organizing, emergent process that generates increasingly
advanced forms of self-reflection, and proposes that the experience
of beauty is the recognition of this evolutionary process and the
reward for participating in it. The experience of aesthetic beauty,
Turner says, is an adaptive function that drives evolution through
sexual selection. Those individuals most sensitive to beauty
survived surface cultural changes, excelled in mating rituals, and
were participants in the positive evolution of the species. Turner
shows how, as a result, neurotransmitters in the brain respond to
certain inherited systems by which we appreciate beauty. Turner
also presents the implications for theories of art and literature
that follow from his identification of the inherent genres of human
aesthetic experience. Forms of art cannot be arbitrary but must be
rooted in our biological inheritance. This calls into question
theories about modern art, and suggests that modernist culture
turned its back on beauty in an attempt to repress and avoid the
shame of humanness and our biological nature. This book breaks
radically with contemporary positions in psychology, sociology,
philosophy, andart, and offers an alternative to present trends in
literary and critical theory. It should be of interest to a wide
variety of readers, including the artistic community, critical
theorists, students of oral traditions, philosophers, and
aestheticians.
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